Consent, Part 3

By Jawad Ali

I have been enjoying the discussions about a husband’s right to demand sex. Some readers seem to be urging me to accept the “no rape” clarification from Sheikh Rabbani (don’t forget the “no coercion” part, folks) and acknowledge my mistake and misunderstanding. That is what this second post was all about.

Shaykh: Smoke away.
MWU: Ooh, not good for the lungs.
Shaykh: Ah, but not inhale, you see.
MWU: Good. But now the whole thing makes no sense.

The right to demand sex means coercion. If there is no coercion then what does the right mean? In a sense we did not really need the “no rape” clarifications. The original fatwa was neatly packaged with its own negation. “Shaykh says that this unkind and unjust thing is permitted to men (but not women). Allah says be kind and just at all times.”

If Bill Clinton said “I am against sexual misconduct and all things inappropriate, but being the president gives me the right to demand that the interns have sex with me. If Hilary were to become president, she will not have this right,” I would say that he is being inappropriate. He defenders would say give him a break, he said he does not want anything inappropriate.

Here is an old joke. The man says that there are two things he can’t stand. One is bigotry. The other is them Negroes. I say the man is a bigot. You say “Liar! He said he is against bigotry.”

This kind of thinking is not limited to Islamic scholars. Let us picture a man from a world very different from the Darul-aloom (polar opposite? Maybe, maybe not). “I believe that sex requires two consenting adults and all that, and I’m all in favor of women’s rights. But I like to take my dates to the best restaurants, and I always order a nice bottle of wine. Gentlemen, I believe this entitles me to demand sex at the end of the evening.” I say run away from this man. You tell me I am too stubborn to ignore his opening disclaimers. You tell me I slander this innocent man.

The whole “smoke, but not inhale” thing is like an MC Escher painting. I say the stairs are going up, you say they are going down. I see two birds in flight. You see a naked lady with big boobs. The Shaykh says he is preparing a more detailed response. I hope he is not planning to add any more of those ironic staircases.

Folks are saying that I am making false assumptions about the true state of Shaykh’s heart. I am only discussing his words to the public. I have no clue about the condition of his heart. If I had to guess, I would say that he probably does not want any harm to come to Muslim women. He probably has a wife, a sister or a daughter that he loves dearly. That is what I would guess. Let us all hope that I am right.

I was having fun with all this comedy, till someone in the comments section sent in a fatwa that blames the rape victim for not wearing the hijab. Read the entire thing here if you have the stomach. The whole thing is not so funny anymore.

This latest gem comes to us from the same folks who were telling us that the Shia are not Muslims. The same scholar, Mufti Ebrahim Desai, has a completely different take on the issue of demanding sex from one’s spouse. He thinks that women have just as much right to this demand as husbands do. This is encouraging. I suppose it all has to do with how one shuffles the deck of Islamic methodology. In Los Vegas the casinos have a machine that shuffles the decks of cards for them for improved randomness. I wonder what these scholars use.

Some folks are saying that we should show more respect for Islamic scholars. We would not spend so much time on this magazine if we did not have a genuine love for Islamic scholars and their scholarship. Muslim WakeUp has featured some of the greatest Islamic scholars of our times on these pages, and we are always looking for more.

The world desperately needs Islamic scholars who are competent, coherent, courageous and honest. It is one of the noblest jobs in the whole world. Things become equally criminal and dangerous when the job is botched up by incompetence, incoherence, cowardice and dishonesty. Many innocent lives are snuffed out and suffocated when the scholars get it wrong.

In a sense MWU is also a forum for critics of Islamic scholarship, among many other things. That is another service that the Islamic world needs desperately. Islamic scholarship needs critics who are not Islamic scholars themselves. It’s a job that Muslims better start taking seriously before others start doing it for us. The job cannot be left to other Islamic scholars, just as restaurant reviews cannot be left up to restaurant owners or film review cannot be left to movie studios alone. Like the Pentagon, Islamic scholarship has proven to be incapable of honest self-critique for the most part.

In the end Islamic scholars have to be judged by the products that they create. I ordered a chicken soup. It tastes awful. There is no chicken in it. Last time there was a human hair in it. This time there is a fly. I cannot base my review on the training, reputation or sincere intentions of the chef. I don’t know why Islamic scholars are expected to get a free pass at all of this.